Standalone Blog Pages

March 29, 2012

Infographic: Hollywood Hypocrisy And Digital Downloads

Hollywood Studios Spent $123 Million Dollars On Political Donations And Lobbying For Anti-Piracy Bills

I’m
a movie buff, and love old films and new ones too. I regularly buy
movies on blu-ray, that I want to add to my film collection. With the
advent of blu-ray, I appreciate the medium even more than I did before.
Something that’s incredibly frustrating to me is the fact that Hollywood
tries to criminalize file sharing and the piracy of movies.

The
film industry loves to characterize anyone who downloads a movie
through file-sharing as a “thief” who is stealing their intellectual
property. They say that when people illegally download a movie, that
they are depriving them of a sale. This overly simplistic
characterization helped them craft PIPA, SOPA, and ACTA - and the
industry wants anyone who shares a digital file to be charged with a
felony - which is insane.Firstly,
downloading a digital file is not stealing. If you have ever looked at a
digital file, it’s not the same as a physical DVD or music CD. The New York Times has an article today that explains this much more succinctly than I can. Rutgers Law School Professor Stuart P. Green writes that:

"If
Cyber Bob illegally downloads Digital Joe’s song from the Internet,
it’s crucial to recognize that, in most cases, Joe hasn’t lost anything.
Yes, one might try to argue that people who use intellectual property
without paying for it steal the money they would have owed had they
bought it lawfully. But there are two basic problems with this
contention. First, we ordinarily can’t know whether the downloader would
have paid the purchase price had he not misappropriated the property.
Second, the argument assumes the conclusion that is being argued for —
that it is theft.

So
what are the lessons in all this? For starters, we should stop trying
to shoehorn the 21st-century problem of illegal downloading into a moral
and legal regime that was developed with a pre- or mid-20th-century
economy in mind. Second, we should recognize that the criminal law is
least effective — and least legitimate — when it is at odds with widely
held moral intuitions.

Illegal
downloading is, of course, a real problem. People who work hard to
produce creative works are entitled to enjoy legal protection to reap
the benefits of their labors. And if others want to enjoy those creative
works, it’s reasonable to make them pay for the privilege. But framing
illegal downloading as a form of stealing doesn’t, and probably never
will, work. We would do better to consider a range of legal concepts
that fit the problem more appropriately: concepts like unauthorized use,
trespass, conversion and misappropriation."

I
couldn’t agree more. If Hollywood studios would embrace technology, and
make all of their films available on a variety of platforms, that are
easily accessible - people would pay to consume the content. Hollywood
refuses to do that, and as long as they fail to change with the times,
they will remain the biggest hypocrites in Hollywood.